How is Ayn Rand Still a Thing?

[Sarpedon]

But in days of yore it was a simple one way street - I have a sword, give me money.

And here is the faulty basis of your argument.

Like many conservatives, you invent a false history, call it the status quo and draw all sorts of false conclusions. You neglect a very simple fact with this example: Swords were fantastically expensive back in the day. You needed money to get a sword in the first place. In the middle ages, a knight, who spent his life training because he didn't have to work, who owned a fantastically expensive sword, an incredibly expensive horse, a ridiculously expensive suit of armor, and an unbelievably expensive castle could hold many, many peasants down. Governments, armies, police and everything are things that the rich have created to protect their wealth from the poor. Your attempt to pretend there was ever a time when this was not so is utterly fatuous. Were you aware that arrowheads were an early form of coinage in some places? Axeheads too. There has NEVER been a time when any sort of economic instrument existed without a parallel military/government power.

You can pretend as much as you like. But as long as your economic ideas are based on a false history, they will be silly and easy to dismiss.

 

[jab]

But people treat it as if it is reality.

Rand herself did, and, when asked, pointed out herself, her hubby and the Brandens as real-life examples of people like her fictional good guys and gals. This was before young Mr. Branden informed her that he would no longer be fucking her adulterously any more, and things blew up.

She's still taken seriously because contemporary Cons can claim her as an American philosopher who backs up their creed, and because some people really like reading about rapey heroes, especially when written by a woman so the reader nowadays can absolve himself or herself of sexism when reading the rape scenes. BTW, I have read Fountainhead (only because I was paid to teach it as part of a course I was co-teaching with someone else), Night of Jan. 16th and most of her collections of essays, each several times. I have occasionally voluntarily taught the play and some of her essays as representative of certain American values and because they are not soporific but show good technique. Based on these readings, and my own scholarly background in the study of literature, I would say she's a good playwright and a better essayist, but an inept writer of long fiction. The rigours of length and form in the play and the essays keep her from becoming too emotionally, sexually and intellectually self-indulgent; of course some people enjoy reading great swatches of mental masturbation. And if the intellectual self-indulgence agrees with a reader's own self-indulgent ideas, it can seem profound.
Based on the awfulness of The Fountainhead, dulness interspersed with heterosexual s/m camp, interspersed with dull heterosexual s/m camp, and based on the long passages from Atlas Shrugged that she self-indulgently quotes in her essays as if these passages were scripture, I have no wish to broach what her fans usually hold up as her magnum opus.

 

[jab]

Jason:
1.but who buys the big big "sticks"?? They don't come into being by magic.
2. You are fallaciously confusing indivual psychology with the structure and functioning of a society.

 

[Dutch_labrat]

But in days of yore it was a simple one way street - I have a sword, give me money.

And here is the faulty basis of your argument.

Like many conservatives, you invent a false history, call it the status quo and draw all sorts of false conclusions. You neglect a very simple fact with this example: Swords were fantastically expensive back in the day. You needed money to get a sword in the first place. In the middle ages, a knight, who spent his life training because he didn't have to work, who owned a fantastically expensive sword, an incredibly expensive horse, a ridiculously expensive suit of armor, and an unbelievably expensive castle could hold many, many peasants down. Governments, armies, police and everything are things that the rich have created to protect their wealth from the poor. Your attempt to pretend there was ever a time when this was not so is utterly fatuous. Were you aware that arrowheads were an early form of coinage in some places? Axeheads too. There has NEVER been a time when any sort of economic instrument existed without a parallel military/government power.

You can pretend as much as you like. But as long as your economic ideas are based on a false history, they will be silly and easy to dismiss.

It goes even further then that. A baron to keep his fancy house, entourage, armory and to pay his taxes to his liege needed a functioning barony. That means well farmed land, cooperating peasants, infrastructure, mills, trade, safety etc.. etc.. etc..

The local feudal system works (it is the most common social structure for the last 6000 years...) because of the shared interests between the local noble and his land. When it doesn't work you get either collapse or revolt. You can see this throughout the history of the old world in China, India, Africa and Europe.

Now companies have taken the roll of nobility how different is the current world from (just a random example) France in 1788
?

 

[untermensche]

...how different is the current world from (just a random example) France in 1788
?

Very different, but I agree with your points.

Capitalism is just a baby step from slavery and feudalism and contains many of the power structures that existed in those systems.

It is a joke to say it equates in any way to freedom.

It is extreme freedom for a very few and a system of coercion for most. If you want to eat your choices are extremely limited.

You can be a big genius and get through life that way or you can sell your labor to some capitalist who won't give you what it's worth but will give you a market wage.

You must submit to a system of inherent theft just to eat.

Some think this represents freedom because they dream of the day when they too can get rich by stealing from workers.

 

[lpetrich]

Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) - Box Office Mojo
Atlas Shrugged: Part II (2012) - Box Office Mojo
Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? (2014) - Box Office Mojo

Lifetime gross of each movie at the box office:

1. $4,627,375
2. $3,336,053
3. $846,704

Moviegoers have shrugged at the series, and the result is a major market failure. A movie celebrating capitalism failing to be a capitalist success, failing according to the money theory of value.

Atlas Shrugged celebrates the money theory of value, notably in Francisco d'Anconia's "money speech" in it. In that speech, he argues that the love of money is the root of all good.

 

[bilby]

Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) - Box Office Mojo
Atlas Shrugged: Part II (2012) - Box Office Mojo
Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? (2014) - Box Office Mojo

Lifetime gross of each movie at the box office:

1. $4,627,375
2. $3,336,053
3. $846,704

Moviegoers have shrugged at the series, and the result is a major market failure. A movie celebrating capitalism failing to be a capitalist success, failing according to the money theory of value.

Atlas Shrugged celebrates the money theory of value, notably in Francisco d'Anconia's "money speech" in it. In that speech, he argues that the love of money is the root of all good.

So did eight rich guys each pay $105,838 to see Atlas Shrugged III; or did 105,838 people go to see the movie at $8 a ticket?

Because I am struggling to decide whether it is less likely; that someone would pay a six digit sum for a movie ticket, or that over 100,000 people would pay to see the thing at all.

On reflection, I am going to go with the Walton family being the only viewers, and paying over $100,000 per ticket. I wonder if that price included popcorn...

 

[RavenSky]

Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) - Box Office Mojo
Atlas Shrugged: Part II (2012) - Box Office Mojo
Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? (2014) - Box Office Mojo

Lifetime gross of each movie at the box office:

1. $4,627,375
2. $3,336,053
3. $846,704

Moviegoers have shrugged at the series, and the result is a major market failure. A movie celebrating capitalism failing to be a capitalist success, failing according to the money theory of value.

Atlas Shrugged celebrates the money theory of value, notably in Francisco d'Anconia's "money speech" in it. In that speech, he argues that the love of money is the root of all good.

So did eight rich guys each pay $105,838 to see Atlas Shrugged III; or did 105,838 people go to see the movie at $8 a ticket?

Because I am struggling to decide whether it is less likely; that someone would pay a six digit sum for a movie ticket, or that over 100,000 people would pay to see the thing at all.

On reflection, I am going to go with the Walton family being the only viewers, and paying over $100,000 per ticket. I wonder if that price included popcorn...

Or the 1000 Libertarians left in the US saw the movies a hundred times each

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Or the 1000 Libertarians left in the US saw the movies a hundred times each

I don't know? Do you think their girlfriends would let them do that?

I'm just kidding. You know those guys are single.